Showing posts with label unclean. Show all posts
Showing posts with label unclean. Show all posts

Friday, July 06, 2012

televangelesus


Jesus didn't care about his reputation. He acted Christ-like regardless of who was around him and regardless of what the religious leaders thought about it.

Philip's reply was prophetic: while we don't hide passages where Jesus ate with tax collectors and sinners, or was called a glutton and a drunkard, we downplay the significant ways in which Jesus broke the stigma and social mores of his time to reach out to those on the margins.

How about you and me? Do we love people like Jesus did? Or do we let cultural and social rules determine whom and how we love?




Note to readers: after reading this cartoon, one of my friends commented that it really should have been Philip who was concerned with Jesus' reputation, and Jesus replying this his disciples will ignore the significance of this in the future. This makes good sense in general, except that this is the "western jesus."

Who is that, you ask? It is a Jesus who acts the way that contemporary North American Christians tend to. This idea and theme came out of reading Richard Beck's book unclean, taking some of the concepts from it and applying them to Jesus. In other words, if Jesus was the way we tend to be, how would he have acted in the situations he found himself in?

I realize after his question that this is not so obvious in this particular cartoon, so I am pointing it out here.

See all western jesus cartoons.

Monday, June 04, 2012

unearthly jesus


Bodily functions. Sometimes we hide their reality, sometimes we are open about them. Some of the crime dramas on television are pretty open – not only do they show characters heading through doors marked "Men" and "Women", but they might also feature entire conversations at the urinal.

Star Trek, in all its generations, is a marked contrast. Of all the episodes I've seen, there are no washrooms or toilets evident anywhere. The one exception to this is bathtubs -- I'm thinking particularly of an episode where Dianna Troy was taking a bath and turned into a bizarre water creature due to some DNA malfunction.

What about Jesus? Did his body function the way ours do? Did he have to take a rest now and then to regain his strength? Did he have to stop to go pee? Or do we prefer to think that he's above such things?

This cartoon was inspired by reading unclean by Richard Beck, which includes discussion of how we view our bodies and whether or not we think of Jesus as really human.

Monday, May 28, 2012

[denying status boundaries]

From Richard Beck's book, unclean: Meditations on Purity, Hospitality, and Mortality.
Given all this, and combined with the central place of table fellowship in Jesus’ ministry, it is not surprising that hospitality was a defining feature and virtue of the early church (cf. Acts 2:42-47, 4:32-37; I Tim 3:2, 5:10; I Pet 4:9; Titus 1:8; Rom 12:13, 15:7). As Christine Pohl notes in her book Making Room, these practices continued to be a distinctive feature of Christian communities during the first centuries of the church:
Hospitality to needy strangers distinguished the early church from its surrounding environment. Noted as exceptional by Christians and non-Christians alike, offering care to strangers became one of the distinguishing marks of the authenticity of the Christian gospel and of the church. Writing from the first five centuries demonstrate the importance of hospitality in defining the church as a universal community, in denying the significance of the status boundaries and distinctions of the larger society, in recognizing the value of every person, and in providing practical care for the poor, stranger, and sick.
Given the impact of sociomoral disgust upon human affairs, it is not surprising that the act of hospitality is fundamentally an act of human recognition and embrace. If exclusion is fundamentally dehumanizing, hospitality acts to restore full human status to the marginalized and outcast. As Pohl writes:
For much of human history, Christians addressed concerns about recognition and human dignity within their discussion and practices of hospitality. Especially in relation to strangers, hospitality was the basic category for dealing with the importance of transcending social differences and breaking social boundaries that excluded certain categories or kinds of persons … Hospitality resists boundaries that endanger persons by denying their humanness.
Beck, pp. 122-123 (Pohl quotes from Making Room, pp. 33, 62, 64)
And a quote from Henri Nouwen to wrap it up:
“Hospitality means the creation of free space where the stranger can enter and become a friend instead of an enemy.”

Friday, May 25, 2012

two-faced jesus

Jesus entered Jericho and was passing through. A man was there by the name of Zacchaeus; he was a chief tax collector and was wealthy. He wanted to see who Jesus was, but because he was short he could not see over the crowd. So he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore-fig tree to see him, since Jesus was coming that way.

When Jesus reached the spot, he looked up and said to him, “Zacchaeus, come down immediately. I must stay at your house today.” So he came down at once and welcomed him gladly.

All the people saw this and began to mutter, “He has gone to be the guest of a sinner.”

But Zacchaeus stood up and said to the Lord, “Look, Lord! Here and now I give half of my possessions to the poor, and if I have cheated anybody out of anything, I will pay back four times the amount.”

Jesus said to him, “Today salvation has come to this house, because this man, too, is a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.”
Luke 19:1-10 NIV


Can you imagine Jesus pretending to be nice to someone? Or having dinner with someone for show? Would Jesus decline to have dinner with someone because they are part of the "wrong crowd"?

How often do we do things for show? Or just to look good to our friends? Whom do we avoid?

What prevents us from truly and freely loving people just as they are?

That Jesus, a rabbi, would choose to go be the guest of a tax collector, is highly significant and breaks the social stigma of the day. The next post, with a quote from Richard Beck's book, explores the significance of hospitality in the early church.

Friday, May 18, 2012

[outside the moral circle]

From Richard Beck's book, unclean: Meditations on Purity, Hospitality, and Mortality.
But what about those people on the outside of the moral circle? Those we identify as strangers? People on the outside of the moral circle are treated instrumentally, as tools to accomplish our goals in the world. In Kantian language, people inside the moral circle are treated as ends in themselves while people on the outside of the moral circle are treated as means to our ends. We treat those inside the moral circle with love, affection, and mercy, and those outside the moral circle with indifference, hostility, or pragmatism. And all this flows naturally from a simple psychological mechanism: Are you identified as “family”? Once the identification is made (or not), life inside and outside the circle flows easily and reflexively.

….

Does humanity end at the edge of the moral circle? That is, is the way we treat people outside the moral circle symptomatic of something darker and more sinister? Do we see outsiders as less than human?

The phenomenon of seeing people as less than human is called infrahumanization. Historically, infrahumanization occurs when one group of people comes to believe that another group of people does not possess some vital and defining human quality such as intellect or certain moral sensibilities. These infrahumans might be human from a biological perspective, but they are believed to lack some moral or psychological attribute that makes them fully human, on par with the "superior” group.

Beck, pp. 101-102
In Jesus' day, lepers were seen as less than human. So were Samaritans and Gentiles. Whom do we think of as less than human today?

See the untouchable jesus cartoon in the previous post.

Monday, May 14, 2012

untouchable jesus

From the gospel of Matthew:
When Jesus came down from the mountainside, large crowds followed him. A man with leprosy came and knelt before him and said, “Lord, if you are willing, you can make me clean.” Jesus reached out his hand and touched the man. “I am willing,” he said. “Be clean!” Immediately he was cleansed of his leprosy. Matthew 8:1-3 NIV.


Cartoon aside, here's what Richard Beck in unclean: Meditations on Purity, Hospitality, and Mortality says about what the true Jesus did:
What is intriguing about this story is the sequence. Jesus touches the leper first. Then the command “Be clean!” is offered. That is, Jesus’ first move is into ritual defilement. By first touching the leper, Jesus intentionally and willfully seeks contamination, standing in solidarity with the unclean. This is striking because the expected sequence would be initial purification followed by contact. Jesus, surprisingly for the onlookers, does the opposite. Contact occurs first. Purification follows solidarity. And one can only wonder how various Christian communities approach this sequence in their own missional endeavors.
Beck, p. 76
Beck then goes on to discuss how the writer of Mark gives us several examples of how Jesus overturns the traditions of his day: when Jesus heals an “unclean” man in the synagogue, and then when he heals a leper after touching him first. Beck then comments,
… in this healing Jesus reverses the directionality and power of pollution (the attribution of negativity dominance). Rather than the unclean polluting the clean, we see, in Jesus’ touch, the clean making the polluted clean. Here, in Jesus, we see a reversal, a positive contamination. Contact cleanses rather than pollutes….
Soon after these events, in a parallel to Matthew 9, Jesus is found admitting “unclean” persons—tax collectors and sinners—to the sociomoral space of table-fellowship.
Beck, p. 81
Contrast Jesus' actions with what you see in church. Are "unclean" persons welcomed? How are those who are different treated? Are we willing to love and accept others where they are at?

Friday, April 27, 2012

[negativity dominance]

From Richard Beck's book, unclean: Meditations on Purity, Hospitality, and Mortality.
Finally, consider the attribute of negativity dominance. The judgment of negativity dominance places all the power on the side of the pollutant. If I touch (apologies for the example I’m about to use) some feces to your cheeseburger the cheeseburger gets ruined, permanently (see above). Importantly, the cheeseburger doesn’t make the feces suddenly scrumptious. When the pure and the polluted come into contact the pollutant is the more powerful force. The negative dominates over the positive.

Negativity dominance has important missional implications for the church. For example, notice how negativity dominance is at work in Matthew 9. The Pharisees never once consider the fact that the contact between Jesus and the sinners might have a purifying, redemptive, and cleansing effect upon the sinners. Why not? The logic of contamination simply doesn’t work that way. The logic of contamination has the power of the negative dominating over the positive. Jesus doesn’t purify the sinners. The sinners make Jesus unclean.

Beck, p. 30.
See the naked jesus cartoon in the previous post.

There is an online discussion of the book at uncleantheology.blogspot.com

Monday, April 23, 2012

naked jesus

From the gospel of Mark:

A large crowd followed and pressed around him. And a woman was there who had been subject to bleeding for twelve years. She had suffered a great deal under the care of many doctors and had spent all she had, yet instead of getting better she grew worse. When she heard about Jesus, she came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak, because she thought, “If I just touch his clothes, I will be healed.” Immediately her bleeding stopped and she felt in her body that she was freed from her suffering.

At once Jesus realized that power had gone out from him. He turned around in the crowd and asked, “Who touched my clothes?”

“You see the people crowding against you,” his disciples answered, “and yet you can ask, ‘Who touched me?’ ”

But Jesus kept looking around to see who had done it. Then the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came and fell at his feet and, trembling with fear, told him the whole truth. He said to her, “Daughter, your faith has healed you. Go in peace and be freed from your suffering.”
Mark 5:24-34 NIV

In Jesus' day, women who were having their period were ritually unclean, and anyone who touched them would also become unclean. This woman had been hemorrhaging for many years, and would have been considered unclean. Yet instead of rejecting her, Jesus rejected the social rules of his day. He blessed her with his response that included her by addressing her as daughter, acknowledging her faith, and then giving her a blessing for her future.

Monday, April 16, 2012

[love and disgust]

From Richard Beck's book, unclean: Meditations on Purity, Hospitality, and Mortality.
As the self gets symbolically extended so does disgust psychology, the primal psychology that monitors the boundary of the body. Disgust accompanies the self as it reaches into the world, continuing to provide emotional markers denoting “inside” versus “outside,” the boundary points of the extended symbolic self. With this understanding of the self in hand, we are well positioned to understand human love, intimacy, and relationality. Specifically, as the notion of “one flesh” highlights, love is a form of inclusion. The boundary of the self is extended to include the other. The very word intimacy conjures the sense of a small, shared space. We also describe relationships in terms of proximity and distance. Those we love are “close” to us. When love cools we grow “distant.” We tell “inside” jokes that speak of shared experiences. We have a “circle of friends.” “Outsiders” are told to “stop butting in.” We ask people to “give us space” when we want to “pull back” from a relationship. In sum, love is inherently experienced as a boundary issue. Love is on the inside of the symbolic self.

….

What we discover in all this is that disgust and love are reciprocal processes. Disgust erects boundaries while love dismantles boundaries. This was the conclusion of St. Catherine noted in the quote at the start of the chapter: sound hygiene was incompatible with charity. One also thinks of St. Francis rushing up to kiss the leper. Love is, at root, the suspension of disgust, the psychic fusion of selves.

Beck, pp. 86, 88.
See the jesus febrezus cartoon in the previous post.

Thursday, April 12, 2012

jesus febrezus


It happened that as he made his way toward Jerusalem, he crossed over the border between Samaria and Galilee. As he entered a village, ten men, all lepers, met him. They kept their distance but raised their voices, calling out, "Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!"
Luke 17:11-13, The Message

While the cartoon is consistent with our western attitudes toward those who are unclean (whatever that means to each of us), this is not how the real Jesus responded. Here's the rest of the passage:
Taking a good look at them, he said, "Go, show yourselves to the priests."

They went, and while still on their way, became clean. One of them, when he realized that he was healed, turned around and came back, shouting his gratitude, glorifying God. He kneeled at Jesus' feet, so grateful. He couldn't thank him enough—and he was a Samaritan.
Luke 17:14-16, The Message

This is the first cartoon in my "unclean" series, inspired by reading Richard Beck's book unclean: Meditations on Purity, Hospitality, and Mortality. I will be pairing these cartoons with related quotes from Beck (usually posted after the cartoon), which I recommend you read.
Edited June 25/2012